The Greek capital Athens has put forth an original initiative called “This is Athens – Polis”.
It aims to clean up the city’s historic center by eliminating graffiti and other vandalism on the city’s walls, and at the same time add a new creative touch, for which an open call for artists has been issued.
The initiative by Athens Partnership, a non-profit organization founded by the Mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, aims to clean 20,000 square meters of walls in Athens.
The walls will also be treated with anti-graffiti and hydrophobic materials, to prevent new illegal posters being affixed and to make the cleaning of new graffiti easy. The goal is to remove every new graffiti from the buildings in the area within 48 hours.
A similar project was launched in February 2017 by the organization, and titled the “Athens Trigono Project.”
This resulted in the cleaning of 8,300 square meters of walls, the creation of 6 new pedestrian streets and seven abandoned buildings being brought back into use; it also included 30 art events.
To add some colour to the streets, about 100 of phone company cable terminals in the area will be decorated by local artists and will be treated as permanent installations, and covered with the same anti-graffiti material as the walls.
